Saturday, May 23, 2015

This is far from an ideal panorama; the left photo has too much motion blur, the center one is fine, and the right photo is overexposed in comparison to the other two. Nevertheless, it's the best I have to capture the "rather unique twist" I mentioned in yesterday's post. That photo was facing toward the falls; this one is taken standing a bit to the west, looking back toward the base of the falls. You can see the run-out coming in from the right side, flowing into the pool at the base. Given the amount of talus and downed logs at the bottom of the falls, this isn't technically a "plunge pool," but for the title, I liked the alliteration. The trees and their roots on the left pretty well obscure the fact that the slope there is the southern margin of the Collier Cone Lava Flow. Can you spot what's missing?

There's no outlet to this pool. This stream emerges from springs at the top of the glacially-carved valley, tumbles off the edge as a hanging valley waterfall, then promptly goes right back underground, into the side of the lava flow. Neato!